Putin Was Reportedly Directly Involved in Election Hacking

For days, Trump Tower has pushed back on the C.I.A.’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election to tip the scales in Donald Trump’s favor. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the president-elect’s transition office responded in a mocking statement on Friday. But despite Trump’s best efforts to dismiss Russia’s involvement, the allegations have become a national crisis. Already, members of both parties are calling for investigations that threaten to delegitimize Trump’s recent electoral victory in the eyes of the public. In the meantime, the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence officials appear more than happy to help cast a shadow of doubt over the next four years by providing the media with a steady drip of information leading back to the Kremlin.

Citing senior government officials, NBC News reports that U.S. intelligence agencies believe with a “high level of confidence” that Russian president Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the cyber-attacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, both of which resulted in the theft and subsequent leaking of thousands of private e-mails. What started as a “vendetta” against Clinton evolved into an attempt to undermine the U.S. democratic process and “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” according to one senior official who spoke with NBC News. The latest revelation is in concert with a statement signed by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies in October, which attributed the high-profile hacks to America’s former Cold War adversary and concluded that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” (Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for Putin, dismissed the NBC News report as “laughable nonsense.”)

Putin’s feud with Clinton dates back to her tenure at the State Department, when she cast doubt on the 2011 Russian elections and referred to the president as a “tough guy with thin skin.” Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, told NBC News that the discord between Clinton and Putin “has been known for a long time” and that the Russian president “wants to discredit American democracy and make us weaker in terms of leading the liberal democratic order. And most certainly he likes President-elect Trump's views on Russia.”

The report of Putin’s alleged involvement comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Russia. On Wednesday, at an emergency meeting of the United States Security Council to discuss the latest developments in Aleppo, U.S. ambassador Samantha Power derided Russia, as well as Iran and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, for worsening the ongoing conflict in Syria. Addressing the three countries, Power asked if they were “incapable” of shame. “Your forces and your proxies are carrying out these crimes,” she said. “Your barrel bombs and mortars and air strikes have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle tens of thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose.” To which, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., shot back, “Please remember your own country's track record, and then you can start opining from the position of any moral supremacy.”

The Obama administration is widely expected to retaliate against Russia by leaking its own sensitive intel on the Kremlin, possibly including information implicating Russian businesses and oligarchs in money laundering and other criminal activities. Details of Putin’s immense wealth, too, could be exposed. But the current administration will have to work quickly, with Trump set to take over the White House in just over a month. Besides dismissing reports of Russian wrongdoing, contradicting the conclusions of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, the president-elect has repeatedly indicated a desire to repair relations with Russia, and earlier this week selected Rex Tillerson, an oil executive with close personal ties to Putin, to serve as secretary of state.

But it’s not just Trump who has warmed to Putin, whose authoritarian style and white nationalist politics mirror his own. Over the past two years, Republicans have grown increasingly fond of America’s former Soviet adversary and its ex-K.G.B. president. According to a YouGov poll, Putin’s net favorability among Republicans has surged from -66, in July 2014, to -10 this month, New Yorkreports. And while a handful of G.O.P. congressmen—including John McCain and Lindsey Graham—have called for further investigation into the allegations of Russian meddling, the majority have remained quiet.